Cities and their Market Sizes

[JDRedemann]

I'm doing a historical re-imagining of the MLB from the merger of the AL and NL in 1903 onward. I've simulated up until the 1950's, when the first relocation of teams occurred, and now I've taken the teams with the least franchise success and fan support and they've been rebranded (i.e. the Philadelphia Phillies became the Los Angeles Angels in 1946, the St. Louis Cardinals became the San Francisco Seals the same year, and the Chicago Cubs became the Minnesota NorthStars in 1952).

My question is: Why don't the market ratings change when you change the city, and what benchmarks could I use to gain some sort of relative accuracy with the city sizes? For instance, what are the default market ratings at the beginning of OOTP12?

[Le Grande Orange]

Market sizes in OOTP are not tied to the population size of the city. Thus any city, no matter how large or small, can support a club in the game. This isn't really realistic, but it does allow for fictional fun in that you can place a club anywhere you like without restrictions.

[silentrob]

Originally Posted by JDRedemann

My question is: Why don't the market ratings change when you change the city, and what benchmarks could I use to gain some sort of relative accuracy with the city sizes? For instance, what are the default market ratings at the beginning of OOTP12?

Not sure if this is what you mean by benchmarks, but if you are looking to get accurate city sizes historically in terms of rank of actual population, the census bureau has that. Here is one website I've used -

Population of the 100 Largest Cities and Other Urban Places In The United States: 1790 to 1990

[CatKnight]

First, the default or 'average' is 5-6. There's some variation, but on average I see the following: Fan Interest 65, Modifier 0, Fan Loyalty 6, Market Size 5-6.

For a 1946 league I'm working on, I pulled up attendance figures for the 1940s and gave teams a rating between 9 (the Yanks) and 4 (the St Louis Browns). Contrary to the game's prompt, this appears to be a 1-10 scale, not 1-20.

For fan interest I gave a bonus of 3 points for each Series won in the last 10 years, and 1 for every pennant (not series). This gave the Yanks an 84 rating, and eight teams the default 65.

Fan loyalty became (fan interest/10 rounded down). I made small adjustments based on my understanding of the era as well - nudging the Browns and Phils downward due to lack of support for example.

Now that's existing cities and teams. In your situation I'd take a look at the census data in the post above this one, and compare the new city to the ones currently in your league. In cities with 2+ teams where one is leaving, like in your examples, I'd give the survivor (Browns/Athletics/White Sox) a 1-2 point boost to represent having secured much of the old Phils/Cards/Cubs fan base.

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by JDRedemann

the Chicago Cubs became the Minnesota NorthStars in 1952).

My question is: Why don't the market ratings change when you change the city, and what benchmarks could I use to gain some sort of relative accuracy with the city sizes? For instance, what are the default market ratings at the beginning of OOTP12?

Thanx for the 1st part. Get Dem Bums out of my city.

Never knew market size and such didnt change when a team relocates.

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by CatKnight

Contrary to the game's prompt, this appears to be a 1-10 scale, not 1-20.

I could be wrong on this but for 11, you can go up to 20. I have a city in 1 of my leagues that has a population of 10 Billion and has 2 major teams and 12 minor league teams I have all the teams in that city set to 20.

[David Ball]

I think you can go up to twenty, but left to its own devices the game won't produce sizes that large, at least in a historical game in the early twentieth century.

What I've done, and it produces market sizes that at least look reasonable, is to take the square root of each city's population and use that as an index figure for assigning a market value. For two-team cities I use sixty percent (not fifty) of the city's population for each club, and take the root of that; for New York I generally start with something like 45% for all three clubs.

Then I give the clubs with the largest index figure, which is to say the New York teams, a ten and assign the other clubs market sizes according to the ratio of their index numbers to the biggest one. As I say, it seems to produce reasonable market sizes, with the big cities having larger market size but not excessively so. I generally set fan loyalty lower in the two-team cities, since the fans are not a captive audience and have an alternative to watching a losing team.

[Chicagofan76]

Originally Posted by David Ball

I think you can go up to twenty, but left to its own devices the game won't produce sizes that large, at least in a historical game in the early twentieth century.

What I've done, and it produces market sizes that at least look reasonable, is to take the square root of each city's population and use that as an index figure for assigning a market value. For two-team cities I use sixty percent (not fifty) of the city's population for each club, and take the root of that; for New York I generally start with something like 45% for all three clubs.

Then I give the clubs with the largest index figure, which is to say the New York teams, a ten and assign the other clubs market sizes according to the ratio of their index numbers to the biggest one. As I say, it seems to produce reasonable market sizes, with the big cities having larger market size but not excessively so. I generally set fan loyalty lower in the two-team cities, since the fans are not a captive audience and have an alternative to watching a losing team.

I suppose that works just as well as anything. In my 2000 Historical League the White Sox Market Size is 3 the Cubs 7, which seems accurate to me. Fan Loyalty is 5 for The Sox 7 for The Cubs seems a tad low for the Cubs.
Fan Interest is 66 for Sox (because of great trades it was 55 prior to those) 49 for Cubs.. the Fan Interest modifier has me baffled right now +17 for Sox -9 for Cubs. Cubs are currently 12-9 Sox 7-12.